“The streets are lawless — you’ll be robbed on sight.”
Viral “London has fallen” montages and travel-warning videos.
Verdict: True but inflated
Phone theft really did surge. In 2026 it is falling fast.
Phone snatching in central London is real. Theft from the person more than doubled between 2019 and 2025, and anyone who has had a phone taken off them outside a Tube station knows exactly how that feels. It is also theft. The videos are selling something much larger.
It is coming down, too. Between January and May 2026 phone thefts and robberies across London fell by a fifth on the same months of 2025, and by almost half in Westminster. On the measure that matters most, whether people are being killed, London is still one of the safest big cities in the rich world. The “then versus now” decline videos routinely run footage that is mislabelled, years out of date, or shot in another country altogether.
- Real
- theft from the person more than doubled, 2019–2025
- 2026
- phone thefts and robberies down 20.6% Jan–May; Westminster down 45.8%
- Inflated
- sold as the end of civil order, not as a rise in theft
